1
LANGDON HAMMER
Department of
Yale Universityjamesmerrillweb.com
New Haven CT 06520-8302yale.edu bio page
USA
EDUCATION
Ph.D., English Language and Literature, Yale University
B.A., English Major, summa cum laude, Yale University
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT
Niel Gray, Jr., Professor of English and American Studies, Yale University
Appointments in the English Department at Yale: Lecturer Convertible, 1987; Assistant Professor, 1989; Associate Professor with tenure, 1996;Professor, 2001; Department Chair,2005-fall 2008, Acting Department Chair,fall 2011 andfall 2013, Department Chair, 2014-17 and 2017-19
PUBLICATIONS
Books
In progress:
Elizabeth Bishop: Life & Works, A Critical Biography (under contract to Farrar Straus Giroux)
The Oxford History of Poetry in English (Oxford UP), 18 volumes, Patrick Cheney general editor; LH coordinating editor for Volumes 10-12 on American Poetry, and editor for Volume 12The Oxford History of American Poetry Since 1939
The Selected Letters of James Merrill, edited by LH, J. D. McClatchy, and Stephen Yenser (under contract to Alfred A. Knopf)
Published:
James Merrill: Poems, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, selected and edited with a foreword by LH (Penguin RandomHouse, 2017), 256 pp
James Merrill: Life and Art(Alfred A. Knopf,2015), 944 pp, 32 pp images, and jamesmerrillweb.com,
a website companionwith more images, bibliography, documents, linked reviews, and blog
Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, 2016. Finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism, 2015. Nameda Times Literary
Supplement “Book of the Year, 2015” (two nominations, November 25). New York Times,
“Top Books of 2015” (December 11). Selected reviews:New Yorker (April 13); New York Times (April 15); Biographile (April 15); Commonweal online (April 16); The Economist (April 18) ; Wall Street Journal (May 2-3); New York Times Book Review (May 17); Boston Edge (May 18); Barnes & Noble Review (May 22); Los Angeles Review of Books(May 23); Twentieth-Century Literature (June 15); Nation(November 17); Yale Review (January 2016);Modernism/Modernity (January 2016);Times Literary Supplement (February 3, 2016); Australian Book Review (February 2016); London Review of Books (March31, 2016); Raritan (Spring 2016); Wallace Stevens Journal (Spring 2016); New York Review of Books (December 22, 2016); New Yorker (February 2, 2017)
The Collected Poems of May Swenson, edited by LH (Library of America, 2013), 755 pp
Selected reviews:Poetry Magazine (December 2013); Yale Review 102 (January 2014) 1: 161-82
Hart Crane: Complete Poetry and Selected Letters, edited by LH(Library of America, 2006), 854 pp
Selected reviews:New Yorker (October 9, 2006): 82-86; Bookforum (December/January 2007):33-37; Wall Street Journal (October 14-15, 2006): 10; Nation(January 1, 2007): 28-30; New York Times Book Review(January 28, 2007): 18-19 and letters by LH and four others(February 11, 25, 2007); Commonweal(April 6, 2007): 24-26; New York Review of Books (April 17, 2008): 36-40
O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane, edited by LH andBrom Weber; text
preparation, introduction,selection, commentary, and annotation by LH (Four Walls
Eight Windows, 1997), 562 pp
Selected reviews: Nation (July 21, 1997): 33-36; Boston Globe (July 29, 1997): E3; Boston
Phoenix(August 1997): 3; Times Literary Supplement (September 19, 1997): 27; New York
Review of Books 46 (October 23, 1997) 16: 32-34; New Republic (January 5 and 12, 1998):
36-41; London Review of Books (September 30, 1999): 45-46
Hart Crane and Allen Tate: Janus-Faced Modernism(Princeton UP, 1993), 277 pp
Selected reviews: Times Literary Supplement (September 24, 1993) 4271: 9; Sewanee Review 102 (1994) 1: viii-xi; Lesbian and Gay Studies Newsletter 21 (July 1994) 2: 32-33; JEGP (October 1994): 601-03; Modernism/Modernity [review-essay] 2 (April 1995) 2: 81-84; named a “Breakthrough Book” in modernist studies by Lingua Franca 10 (2000) 2: 14
Articles and review-essays
“James Merrill, Off the Gold Standard,”in Evaluations: U.S. Poetry Since 1950, ed. Robert von
Hallberg (U of New Mexico P, 2018)[7,500 words]
“Fantastic Forms: A Response to Caroline Levine’s Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network,” PMLA
(December 2017) [3,500 words]
“Seeing Through the Eye: Hart Crane’s The Bridge, Modern Art, and the Idea of Abstract Form,”
introduction fora letterpress limited edition of The Bridgeprinted on a scroll with woodblock
prints by JoelShapiro and photographs byMichael Kenna (San Francisco, the Arion Press,
2017) [7,300 words]; revised and reprinted as “Hart Crane’s View from the Bridge” online in
New York Review of Books Daily(November 24, 2017) [4,300 words]
“Inside and Underneath Words [on Susan Howe’s Debths],”New York Review of Books64 (September
28, 2017) 14: 31-33 [4,700 words]
“Voice and Erasure in Srikanth Reddy’s Voyager” in The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time,eds.
Charles Altieri and Nicholas Nace (Northwestern UP, 2017), 29-45
“Stevens and Modernism” in Wallace Stevens in Context, ed. Glen McLeod (Cambridge UP, 2017): 99-
109
“The Biographical Container,” Yale Review 104 (Summer 2016) 3: 19-36
“James Merrill’s Water Street (1957-1962),” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 32 (2011) 1-2: 336-86
“Poetry in Review” [review-essay on Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems], Yale Review
99(Winter 2011) 1: 176-89
“Lost at Sea: Jasper Johns with Hart Crane,” Yale Review 97 (Fall 2009) 4: 34-53
“Recognizing Hart Crane,” Hiram Poetry Review (Spring 2008) 69:76-83
“Plath at War” in Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of theVisual, ed. Kathleen Connors and Sally Bayley
(Oxford UP,2007): 145-58
“James Merrill’s Double Life: ‘The Thousand and Second Night,’”Poetica [University of Tokyo] 64
(2006): 69-85
“Hall of Voices: Richard Howard,” Parnassus: Poetry in Review29(2006) 1-2: 97-117
“Life into Art: James Merrill’s ‘16.ix.65,’” Literary Imagination7 (2005) 3: 278-85
“Merrill and Stevens,” The Wallace Stevens Journal28 (2004)2: 295-302
Masks of the Poet: James Merrill and Kimon Friar, AmericanCollege of Greece, LibrarySeries 17, Athens,
2003, 47 pp[6,000-word essay and exhibition catalogue]
“The American Poetry of Thom Gunn and Geoffrey Hill,” Contemporary Literature43 (2002) 4: 644-
66; repr.inSomethingWe Have That They Don’t: Anglo-American PoeticRelations, eds. Steve
Clark and Mark Ford (Iowa UP, 2004)
“Frank Bidart and the Tone of Contemporary Poetry,” Southwest Review87 (2002)1: 75-89; rept. in
Fastening the Voiceto the Page: On the Poetry of Frank Bidart, eds. Liam Rector and Tree Swenson (U of Michigan P, 2007)
“Plath’s Lives,” Representations (2001) 75: 61-88
“Thom Gunn: The Cool Queer Tales of Cupid,” Raritan 20 (2000) 2: 114-25
“The Letters of Hart Crane,” Raritan 17 (1997) 1: 100-20
“Useless Concentration: Life and Work in Elizabeth Bishop’sLetters and Poems,” American
Literary History 8 (1996) 2: 162-80
“Poetry in Review” [on Allen Grossman and Robert Pinsky], Yale Review 84 (1996) 3: 168-78
“Art and AIDS; or, How Will Culture Cure You?” Raritan 14(1995) 3: 103-18
“Poetry in Review” [review-essay on May Swenson, Mary Jo Salter, Heather McHugh, andformalist
poetry by women poets],YaleReview 83 (1995) 1: 121-41
“The New Elizabeth Bishop,” Yale Review 82 (1994) 1: 135-49
“Who Was Randall Jarrell?” Yale Review 79 (1990) 3: 389-405
“Robert Lowell’s Breakdown,” Yale Review 79 (1990) 2: 172-87
“Modernism in Reverse: Hart Crane, Eliot, and Joyce,” Western Humanities Review 43 (1989) 3:
167-87
Reviews
Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall, New York Times Book Review (March 1,
2017)
Invasions [poems] and The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry by Adam Kirsch, New York
Times Book Review(August31, 2008): 15
Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems by John Ashbery, New York Times Book Review (April 20,
2008): 21
In the Blood [memoir] by Andrew Motion, New York Times BookReview (February 3, 2008): 7
Horse Latitudes [poems] and The End of the Poem: Oxford Lectures by Paul Muldoon, New York Times
Book Review(February 25,2007): 24
Hart Crane: After His Lights by Brian M. Reed, MLQ68 (Winter 2007)1: 126-28
God’s Silence [poems] by Franz Wright, New York Times Book Review (May 14, 2006): 38
Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashberyby Helen Vendler, New York Times
Book Review(October 16, 2005): 8
Star Dust [poems] by Frank Bidart, New York Times Book Review (July 24, 2005): 11
Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara [memoir] by Joe LeSueur, New York Times Book Review
(April 13, 2003): 16
A Short History of the Shadow [poems] by Charles Wright, LosAngeles Times Book Review (August 18,
2002): 6
James Merrill's Apocalypse by Timothy Materer, Modernism/Modernity8 (2001) 3: 515-17
Electric Light by Seamus Heaney, New York Times Book Review (April 8, 2001): 16
The Boys at Twilight: Poems 1990-1995 and Time’s Fool: A Tale in Verse by Glyn Maxwell, New York
Times Book Review (November 5, 2000): 26
Trappings [poems] by Richard Howard, New York Times Book Review (January 23, 2000): 24
Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate: Collected Letters, 1933-1976, ed. Alphonse Vinh, and Cleanth Brooks
and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence, ed. James Grimshaw, Jr., Modernism/Modernity 7 (2000) 1: 165-68
The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane by Paul Mariani, New York Times Book Review (July 18, 1999):
9
The Triumph of Love [poem] by Geoffrey Hill, New York Times Book Review (January 17, 1999): 9-10
Politics and Form in Postmodern American Poetry: O’Hara, Bishop, Ashbery, and Merrill by Mutlu Konuk
Blasing, Modern Philology 96 (1998) 1: 137-42
From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry by AlanGolding, Modern Philology 95 (1998) 3: 433-
37
Desire [poems] by Frank Bidart, Nation 265 (November 24, 1997) 17: 32-33
Poetry and comment in The American Scholar
Nausheen Eusuf, 86.4 (2017)
Andrew Motion, 86.3 (2017)
Mary Jo Salter, 86.2 (2017)
Stephen Burt, 86.1 (2017)
David Barber, 85.4 (2016) [Best American Poetry2016, ed. Edward Hirsch]
Jason Koo, 85.3 (2016)
Rowan Ricardo Phillips, 85.2 (2016) [Best American Poetry2016, ed. Edward Hirsch]
Maureen N. McLane, 85.1 (2016)
Sandra Gilbert, 84.4 (2015)
Robert Pinsky and Ange Mlinko, 84:3 (2015)
Alan Williamson,84:2 (2015)
Adam Fitzgerald, 84:1 (2015)
Ansel Elkins, 83:4 (2014)
Jill Bialoski, 83:3 (2014)
David Lehman, 83:2 (2014)
Louise Glück, 83:1 (2014)
J. D. McClatchy, 82:4 (2013)
Peter Cole, 82.2 (2013)
Robin Robertson, 82.1 (2013)
Angie Estes, 81:4 (2012) [rpt. in The Allure of Grammar: The Glamour of Angie Estes's Poetry, ed.
Doug Rutledge, U of Michigan P, 2018]
Spencer Reese, 81:3(2012)
Kevin Young, 81:2 (2012)
Christian Wiman, 81:1(2012)
John Koethe, 80:4 (2011)
Ellen Bryant Voigt,80:3(2011)
John Ashbery, 80:2 (2011)
Eavan Boland, 80:1 (2011)
Elizabeth Alexander, 79:4(2010) [Best American Poetry 2010, ed. Kevin Young]
Paul Muldoon, 79:3 (2010)[BestAmerican Poetry 2010, ed. Kevin Young]
Alfred Corn, 79:2 (2010)
Karl Kirchwey, 79:1 (2010)
Maureen N. McLane, 78:4 (2009)
Gary Snyder, 78:3 (2009)
Rosanna Warren, 78:1(2009)
Henri Cole, 77:4 (2008)
Kay Ryan, 77:3 (2008)
Frank Bidart,77:2(2008)
Louise Glück, 76:4(2007)
John Hollander, 76:2(2007)
Peter Filkins, Marilyn Nelson,Catriona O’Reilly, and RobertPinsky, 76:1 (2007)
Carl Phillips, 75:4 (2006)
Heather McHugh,75:3(2006)
Michael Longley,75:1(2006)
Charles Wright,74:4(2005)
Thylias Moss and Charles Simic, 74:2(2005)[rept. in Contemporary Literary Criticismv 256]
Thom Gunn and Anthony Hecht,74:1(2005)
Interviews,video, short essays, notes, and introductions,edited letters
“Don’t worry. Yale still teaches Shakespeare,” Washington Post (December 15, 2017)
“About that Ouija Board: How Langdon Hammer Summoned a Poet’s Spirit,” Interviewed by
Dwight Garner, New York Times (2016)
“On Hart Crane,” Interview with Niall Munro by Dan Schneider, Cosmoetica (2016)
Interviewing Robin Magowan for the James Merrill House (2016)
Interviewedby Gil Roth, Virtual Memories Project (2015)
In conversation with Stephen Yenser at the Hammer Museum, UCLA (2015)
James Merrill House Annual Lecture, La Grua Center, Stonington CT (2015)
“James Merrill and the Other World: Langdon Hammer in Conversation,” Academy of American
Poets (2014)
Interviewing Stephen Yenser for the James Merrill House (2014)
Interviewing J. D. McClatchy for the James Merrill House (2014)
“Bringing Poetry Back to the Basics: The ‘Fascination with the Possibilities of Language’ in May
Swenson’s Poems,” Reader’s Almanac: Official Blog of the Library of America (Feb 2013)
“Langdon Hammer on Hart Crane,” Reader’s Almanac: Official Blog of the Library of America
(Feb 2012)
“Object Lesson: Poetry via Ouija,” Yale Alumni Magazine, Jan/Feb 2012
Introduction to The Mower: New and Selected Poems by Andrew Motion (Boston: David R. Godine,
2009), 1-5
“Teaching Voice,” On Common Ground (Spring 2009) 13: 6-7
Introduction toA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, Signet Classic Edition (New
York, 2006), 7-18
“Elizabeth Bishop: Letters to Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale andJamesMerrill,” Yale Review91
(2003)2: 27-54
“Last Words: On Stevens and Apocalypse” [afterword to an issue on “Stevens and Apocalyptic
Language” edited by Eleanor Cook], Wallace Stevens Journal 23 (1999) 2: 194-96
“Caroline Gordon, Allen Tate, and Hart Crane: An Exchange,” Sewanee Review 106 (1998) 1: 88-90
“Hart Crane and Joseph Stella,” Artists on Art: Observations by Yale Faculty on Works in the Yale
University Art Gallery, ed. Daphne Deeds (Yale U Pubs. 1999), 22-25
“Bright Stones: Letters of Hart Crane and Jean Toomer,” Yale Review 84 (1996) 2: 22-38
“Efforts of Attention: An Interview with Anthony Hecht,” SewaneeReview 104 (1996) 1: 120-33
“Working Through Poems: An Interview with John Hollander,” Southwest Review(1995): 423-37;
repr. in The Poetry of Everyday Life by John Hollander, U of Michigan P, 1999
Selected papers and invited lectures
“On ‘Self-Portrait in a Tyvek TM Windbreaker,’” Lecture for the Symposium, “Line by Line,”
English Department, U of Hartford, 2017
“The Talking Board: Ouija, Wordplay, Poetics,” History and Theory of Lyric Forms lecture,
EnglishDepartment, U of Chicago, 2016
Lectures and public conversations in conjunction with the publication of James Merrill: Life and Art
(March-November 2015): New York Institute for the Humanities (NYU); Poetry Center,
92nd Street YMHA, New York; Century Association, New York; Leon Levy Center for
Biography at CUNY Graduate Center; The Book Club, Greenwich CT; Jonathan Edwards
College, Yale; James Merrill House, Stonington; Hammer Museum, UCLA; Collected
Works, Santa Fe, NM; keynote lecture,James Merrill Symposium, Washington University
in St. Louis; seminars and English Department lecture, University of Georgia; English and
Comparative Literature, Brown; Biography Group (NYU)
“James Merrill’s Voices from the Other World,” U of Chichester, 2010; English Department,
Princeton, 2011; Poetry andMysticism Symposium, Judaic Studies, Yale, 2012
“Poetry, Biography, James Merrill,” Presentation with Richard Howard, Levy Center for Biography, CUNY, 2010
“James Merrill: Some of His Voices,” Woodberry Poetry Room,Harvard University, 2010
“Meeting Ephraim: JM, DJ, and the Ouija Board,” James MerrillHouse Lecture, Stonington CT,
2008
“The Soul is not a Soul: John Ashbery and LouiseGlück,”Keynote Lecture, Beall Poetry Festival,
Baylor College, 2008
“Lost at Sea: Jasper Johns with Hart Crane,” lecture for theexhibition “Jasper Johns: Gray,” Art
Institute of Chicago, 2007; English Department, University of Rochester, 2008
“Plath’s German,” Sylvia Plath 75th Anniversary Conference,Oxford University, 2007; Cross-
cultural Poetics Group, Yale, andSmith College, 2008; Freie Universität, Berlin, 2012
“Recognizing Hart Crane,”Keynote Lecture, Horace BissellSymposium, Hiram College, 2007;
additional talks about Crane at Chapters Bookstore, Washington DC; New School, New
York; Poetry Society of America, CUNYGraduate Center, 2006-7
“Auden and ‘The Prick,’” Modernist Studies Association, Chicago, 2005
“James Merrill: The Biographical Container,” Literary Biography conference at Beinecke Library,
Yale, 2005; Modern LanguageAssociation, Philadelphia, 2006
“James Merrill in Stonington: The Winter of ‘The Summer People,’”First Annual James Merrill
Lecture, Stonington Town Library, Stonington, Connecticut, 2005
“Life into Art: James Merrill’s ‘16.ix.65,’” James Merrill: A Celebration, Yale, 2005
“James Merrill at Amherst,” Amherst College, 2004
“Masks of the Poet: James Merrill and Kimon Friar,” Ninth AnnualKimon Friar Lecture in Neo-
Hellenic Arts and Letters, American College of Greece, Athens; lecture, Hellenic Studies
Program, Yale, 2003
“The Teaching of Modern Literature: Lionel Trilling and TwoStudents,” Modernist Studies
Association, Houston 2001; Vanderbilt, 2003
“Crane’s Letters,” Hart Crane Centennial Celebration, 92ndSt YMHA, New York City, 1999
“Modern Letters and the Making of the Author’s Life,” Modernist Studies Association, Penn State,
1999
“Stieglitz, Crane, and Abstract Form,” Yale U Art Gallery, 1999
“The American Poetry of Geoffrey Hill and Thom Gunn,” Uof London, 1998
“The Tone of Contemporary Poetry,” Wellesley College, 1998
“Plath’s Lives,” Yale, 2001; U of Chicago, 1999; Johns Hopkins, 1995; Faculty Seminar in
Psychoanalysis and the Humanities, NYU, 1995
“On Sylvia Plath” and “On Elizabeth Bishop,” Hilen Lectures in American Literature and Culture,
U of Washington, 1995
“Writing Lives: Postwar American Poetry,” English Department, Emory, 1995
“Ashbery’s Formalism,” MLA Convention, San Diego, 1994
“Thylias Moss's Postmodernism,” The Poetry Center, Paterson, New Jersey, 1994
“How Will Culture Cure You? Disease and Desire in Elegies for David Kalstone,” MLA
Convention, Toronto, 1993
“Mrs. Gaskell and the Martyrdom of Charlotte Bronte,” MLA Convention, San Francisco, 1991
“Books, Lives, and Merchandise: The Literary Author in theMarketplace,” USC, 1990
“Feminism and ‘The New Formalism,’”MLA Convention, New Orleans, 1988
“Allen Tate's Two Eliots, 1922 and 1926,” T. S. Eliot Centenary, U of New Hampshire, 1988
“An Unfinished Face: Flannery O'Connor and A Memoir of Mary Ann,” Northwestern,1987
Poems
“The Divining” and “A Troika for Rachmaninoff,” Shenandoah 38 (1986) 4: 43-44
“Detail from ‘The Assassination of Khosrow Parviz,’” Ploughshares 7 (1981) 3: 95-96
“Chenega Island,” Yale Review 70 (1981) 3: 409-10
PRIZES, FELLOWSHIPS,and GRANTS
Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, 2016
Finalist, Poetry Foundation Pegasus Prize for Poetry Criticism, 2015
Fellow, Leon Levy Biography Center, CUNY Graduate Center, 2012-13
Graduate Student Mentor Award in the Humanities, Yale University, 2011
Resident Fellow, Liguria Study Center, Bogliasco Foundation, Italy, 2009
Resident Fellow, James Merrill House, Stonington, CT, 2008
Robert Rosenkranz and Alexandra Munroe Foundation, 2005
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2003-04
Research Fellowship, Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies at Yale, 2003
Research Fellowship, Niarchos Foundation, Hellenic Studies Program, Yale, 2002, 2003
Research Fellowship, Olin Library, Washington U, St Louis, 2002
Griswold Faculty Research Fellowship, Yale, 2001
Moore Fund and Beinecke Library grants for teaching,Yale, 2002-4
Whitney Humanities Center Research Fellow, Yale, 1994-95
Griswold Faculty Fellowship, Yale, 1994
Smart Family Fund(funding for poetry series at Yale), 1994
Morse Junior Faculty Fellowship, Yale,1991-92
Frederick W. Hilles Fund, Yale, 1990
Whiting Dissertation Fellowship, Yale, 1984-85
Tinker Prize for the Outstanding English Major, Yale, 1980
Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, 1978
EDITORIAL WORK AND ACADEMIC SERVICE
Chair, External Review Committee of Creative and Academic Writing, Wesleyan University, 2016
Advisory Council, Library of America, since 2015
Advisory Board, Claude Fredericks Foundation (Pawlet,VT), since 2010
Advisory Board, James Merrill House (Stonington, CT), since 2009
Editorial Board, Yale Review, since 2007
Poetry Editor, American Scholar, since 2004
Judge, George G. Nathan Prize in Drama Criticism, 2005-7, 2011, 2014-17
Judge, with Gary Snyder and Caroline Kizer, Bollingen Prize in Poetry (Robert Creeleyselected)
1999; with Ellen BryantVoigt and Nicholas Jenkins (Frank Bidart selected) 2007
Advisory Editor, English Literary History (ELH), since 1998
Book manuscript referee: Princeton UP, Harvard UP, Blackwell,Wesleyan UP,U of Virginia P,